Current Projects

Arsenic Exposure in US Drinking Water: Spatial Patterns, Temporal Trends, and Related Mortalities

We are evaluating the impact of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) maximum contaminant level (MCL) for arsenic on arsenic exposure from public drinking water systems (in 2001, EPA decreased the MCL from 50 to 10 µg/L). This project analyzes spatial patterns and temporal trends in public drinking water arsenic exposure, identifies subgroups that remain susceptible to higher exposure levels, and evaluates the association between water arsenic exposure and cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. We are leveraging several large, national-scale, publicly-available databases and developing new statistical methods to overcome several challenges inherent to this type of secondary data analysis, including:
    •Bayesian models to multiply impute values below detection limits
    •Novel biomarkers to isolate arsenic internal dose from drinking water
    •Estimated public drinking water arsenic exposures for the entire US population

Replication code/archive and datasets created for public use as a product of this project are available via my GitHub upon publication.

Mercury exposure assessment: a community-directed research project

We are working with community-based collaborators in the Great Plains to design and implement a pilot study to characterize mercury exposure in tribal communities using both biomonitoring and environmental monitoring. A key component of this project is the inclusion of local high school students in field work/data collection, data analysis, and results dissemination. We mentor local students through high school science fair projects related to population- and community-level metal exposure assessment and plan to expand this collaboration even further beyond the aims of this specific project.